On Bugs and Linux Quality

[Daniel Mons]

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Slawek Drabot wrote:

| Choice is great. However we need to ask ourselves if we really need 20
different media players, for example, instead of 3 or 4 really good ones?
|
| The nature of open source means that there are always more bugs than
resources to fix them and therefore the tendancy for spawning new
projects in response to shortfalls in another. I'm quite happy to live
with this arrangement when using open source in the home, but I see this
as a big obstacle for commercial/corporate adoption.

I don't agree.  Open source is very organic and very Darwinian: the
strong survive, and the weak fail.  Yes, there are dozens of
spreadsheeting and word processing software options, but only OpenOffice
is making serious in-roads into corporate adoption.

Similarly, there are hundreds of distros available.  Speaking purely
from the desktop perspective, I've only ever seen 2 in operation in the
corporate world (RedHat and SuSE), and on other in use in the
commercial/non-corporate world (Ubuntu).  The dozens of fly-by-night
distros out there don't make it, because they don't have the backing
needed by industry.


|  Let's face it, the pointy haired bosses struggle with making a
decision when faced with 2 or 3 options. Expand that to 20 and beyond
and we have decision deadlock.

Speaking as someone who makes a living implementing free software in
businesses, I have not once in my entire career given a PHB-type 20
different options.  Anyone who has even the slightest clue understands
that of eh 20 different options, only 1 or 2 of them are serious
contenders for the particular need at hand.  Sure, there are hundreds of
network file systems.  Only Samba is a real contender in an network full
of Microsoft desktops.  Sure, there are hundreds of email clients.  Only
one of them (Evolution) is a contender if there's an MS Exchange server
in house.  And if you're using generic IMAP, you'd be mad to use use
Claws, Mutt, or any of the other dozens of mail clients.  Only Evolution
and Thunderbird are worth your time.

Don't make the mistake of assuming that the 20 different options are
your disposal are ALL contenders.  If you want to start pushing hobbiest
homebrew software infront of corporate types, you dig your own grave.
Open source covers an enormous range and quality of software - some of
which is professional and polished, some of which is rubbish.

What irks me about this mindset is that the same happens in the
proprietary world.  I can name for you dozens of image editing
applications, all of which are proprietary.  When architecting a graphic
design studio, would I give all of them as options to the business
owner?  Hell no.  They'd get the top 3 in the market (Photoshop, Corel,
Xara) as options, and they could pick from there.  No need for them to
see every single low-end, niche or hobbiest bit of crap on the market.

Ditto for open source.  The above makes the assumption that "just
because it's in the package manager, it's a viable option on the
desktop".  Tell me: when was the last time you installed all 27,000
packages available to Ubuntu users via APT?  Answer: never.  You pick
and choose the ones that work.  Same goes for the proprietary world.
Software is near infinite in choice and range, yet nobody claims that it
freaks out PHBs when faced with hundreds of choices of proprietary software.

Just because it exists at all, doesn't mean you have to install, use, or
even consider it.

- -Dan
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